Cole MacGrath
'' "With time, I'm learning to control it. Master it. Just hope it's not too late." '' Cole MacGrath is the protagonist of inFamous, an ordinary man given extraordinary abilities, and the power to choose what to do with them. Before The Blast Before the game began, Cole was an ordinary bicycle messenger, delivering packages from one spot to another in Empire City. The two most important people in his life are his girlfriend, Trish Dailey, and his best friend Zeke Dunbar. As a hobby, Cole practices urban exploration, parkour and probably buildering, becoming comfortable climbing on all manner of surfaces, and mapping out large segments of the underground sewer system. According to the developers, Cole is also a college graduate. The Blast On the day that inFamous begins, Cole is told to deliver a package from an unknown customer, but when he arrives, he gets a phone call telling him to open it, revealing a spherical device. It activates, causing a massive explosion that wipes out six city blocks, killing hundreds of people instantly, including Trish's sister Amy. Cole, the only survivor of the immediate explosion, wakes up in the blast crater and runs to safety, although he falls into a coma from the strain of the strange new electrical abilities he has gained. Post-Blast Empire City is put under quarantine, and without outside help, chaos quickly descends on the city. Cole awakens after about four days and gradually learns to control his electrical powers. Approximately 2 weeks after the quarantine was put in effect, Cole's powers have developed to the point where he can fire powerful electrical blasts and generate potent shock waves. As he regroups with Zeke, he discovers that a rogue television DJ, "The Voice of Survival", has identified him as the cause of the explosion, turning the city populace, including Trish, who blames Cole for Amy's death, against him. Cole and Zeke attempt to make it past the quarantine using Cole's new superpowers, but they are overwhelmed by military units and almost killed. Zeke escapes, but Cole is caught by an FBI agent named Moya Jones, who urges Cole to return to Empire City to help recover the Ray Sphere, the device that triggered the explosion, as well as her husband and fellow agent John White, in exchange for breaking him, Zeke, and Trish from quarantine. Powers Cole is a powerful electrokinetic that can draw and control huge amounts of electricity throughout his body and store it there. This has several beneficial effects, besides electrical manipulation, the electricity running throughout his body greatly accelerates the body's natural ability to repair damage by stimulating the muscle tissue, this also allows for his muscles to absorb physical trauma to a far greater degree than normal humans, granting the ability to survive falls from extreme heights with practically no harm to his body. He has not fully adapted to his powers as of yet, as he only just gained them. As he begins to gain control of his powers he can only create a stream of electrical discharge through his palms in the form of Lightning Bolts, and absorb electricity from nearby sources, but soon discovers various other abilities, such as the Thunder Drop; charging up large amounts of electrical energy within his body while falling and dispersing it in a powerful shockwave on contact with the ground, creating spheres of electrical energy that can be used as projectiles and rapidly disperse in a concussive force equivalent to that of grenades or missiles, the ability to either drain bio-electrical energy from living beings or send his own bio-electrical energy into someone else to heal them, accelerating the body's natural healing processes temporarily; the ability to, if in contact with a person's head, read the electrical currents of the brain and see their memories, even in the recently deceased. The ability to create electrokinetic forcefields capable of blocking rapidly moving projectiles, and even manipulate electrical currents within the air to create powerful streams of lightning to fall from the sky which he can fully control. But if Kessler, a fully developed electrokinetic, is any indication, his powers are still immature despite being so powerful already, and can still develop and master many powers. Appearance and mental state His powers also seem to change drastically depending on his mental state, represented by the Karma system and his various Good and Evil upgrades. Good The colour of his attacks at Good karma are blue. At Hero rank, Cole is trying to protect the civilians of Empire City. As such he is much more accurate at shooting his lightning, and other projectiles which have been shown to be much less destructive, but much stronger on individual targets than Evil karma abilities. Some of his powers, such as Shock Grenades, will focus more on living captures. His clothes stay yellow and black (may seem cleaner) and Cole will still have his usual face. Cole's mental state throughout the game as Good develops positively: When the good actions he does makes him a champion of the people, his focus is turned towards making order in Empire City, even as much as getting out of there and finding out what happened during and before The Blast. In the Good ending, Cole has become a symbol of hope to the people of Empire City. He is unsure about his thoughts of Zeke. The Crime Level is dropping greatly. He is currently helping in the rebuilding of the city. Evil His powers at Evil karma are coloured blood red, and later black with red outline if all Karma moments are done evilly. At Infamous rank, Cole has no empathy for the inhabitants of Empire City, and thus, his abilities are much less focused and more destructive than the Good variants due to the lack of required precision necessary to their counterparts, but seems to do less damage when focusing on a individual. Unfortunately for any innocent bystanders, this also causes a huge amount of collateral damage on the side and civilians are often killed by the stray grenade lob. Cole also begins to change in appearance, indicating that his powers are "corrupting him": His skin will turn pale, and for every rank, black, vein-like markings that resemble electric currents will grow larger on the neck and back of his head. This is possibly a result of the immense amounts of power surging through him, and thus, the altered appearance may be a result of the energy disrupting several body functions. Cole's ego is also altered: While his main focus is getting out of the city at the start of the game, his thoughts turn towards both getting more power and punishing those who did him wrong. In the Evil ending, Cole has become a tyrant and has destroyed Empire City even further. The crime is steadily rising. Cole believes that control belongs to the strongest, and no one is stronger than him. Side Effects and Weaknesses There are several unfortunate side effects to Cole's new-found powers, mostly dealing with the fact that his body is constantly channeling a powerful electrical field. He can channel and control electricity, but not generate it, meaning he has to draw power from external sources, and if he is away from a source, he'll be mostly powerless. The field around Cole's body makes it impossible for him to use any firearm, for example; his electricity ignites the gunpowder inside the bullets, causing the gun to violently explode in his hand. Cole can take advantage of this and disable any machine gun turret he can get his hands on. The field has a similar effect on automobiles, forcing Cole to travel the city on foot. Most dangerously, should any part of Cole's body come into physical contact with water, a massive amount of energy will be released into it, much like short-circuiting. This release is of such high-voltage that even Cole himself is injured by the discharge. If the water is deeper than Cole is tall, Cole will immediately be electrocuted, and he will pass out. If the water is waist high or shallower, electricity will surge out of his body, constantly injuring him (and killing anyone also in the water around him) until he is no longer in contact with it. Even standing on a puddle is dangerous; although it will have no effect on Cole, anyone who steps into a puddle that Cole is also standing on will be electrocuted and drop dead. If pedestrians are killed in this fashion, it causes negative karma. Alternate Timeline In Kessiler's timeline, it is revealed that he developed his powers naturally and married Trish with Zeke as his best man. He had two kids but they along with his wife were killed by the hands of The Beast. 'Trivia ' *Cole's original name was to be Dylan. This is shown in the Game Informer magazine with inFamous as its cover story. *Cole's last name, MacGrath, is coincidentally the same as the director of an unrelated movie called Infamous, Douglas McGrath. *Cole's powerset and abilities are similar to, and likely inspired by, a variety of electricity-manipulators in comics, including Spider-Man villain Electro, Surge of the New X-Men, and Justice League of America member and raging stereotype Black Lightning. *A simple thing such as Cole running or jogging has about twenty animations, for the way human beings change balance when changing directions, to subtle motions in different body parts. *An early version of Cole in one of Sucker Punch's prototypes was called GearWolf. One of the key game mechanics in this was flirting. GearWolf had an infinite supply of razor-sharp bike gears from his motorcycle, which was another game mechanic. GearWolf also had a very similar design to Cole, in terms of the backpack and jacket. This prototype saw the game's first grapple sequence, and the gears were the prelude to the electric powers. Galllery Category:Characters McGrath, Cole